Rate contract for Aakash tablets

NEW DELHI, Jan 8, 2014, DHNS:

Even as Kapil Sibal’s Communication and Information Technology Ministry is working out rate contract for the Union minister’s pet project “Aakash”, his successor in the Human Resource Development Ministry M M Pallam Raju is yet to firm up on buying his idea to provide low cost access-cum-computation devices to students.

The HRD minister, however, has favoured research and development work on Aakash, originally touted as a $35 tablet PC by the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay.

“The ministry, however, is yet to decide how much and when it should procure the Aakash tablets. How much subsidy should be given to students,” top sources in the ministry said.

The Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals, in consultation with the Ministry of Communications and IT, is in the process of finalising the rate contracts, they added.